A few days back TM Krishna was announced to be the winner of the Sangita Kalanidhi award by the music academy. However, this didn’t go down well with other Carnatic singers. So much so, they’ve all come out to protest against TM Krishna getting the award. Musical duo Ranjani and Gayatri were one of the first ones to register their displeasure at the award being given to TM Krishna. Soon enough Dushyanth Sridhar also marked his disapproval of the award going to TM Krishna.
Ranjani-Gayatri took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that they shall withdraw their participation from the conference of the music academy as it would be presided by TM Krishna. Not only that, they would also abstain from performing at the music concert that is scheduled to happen on December 25.
Ranjani-Gaytri wrote in their statement, “He has caused immense damage to the Carnatic music world, wilfully and happily stomped over the sentiments of this community and insulted most respected icons like Tyagaraja and MS Subbulakshmi. It is dangerous to overlook TM Krishna’s glorification of a figure like EVR (Periyar) who openly proposed a genocide of Brahmins, repeatedly called/ abused every woman of this community with vile profanity, relentlessly worked to normalise filthy language in social discourse (sic).”
Besides them, even Dushyanth Sridhar has penned a similarly worded letter to the President of the Music Academy. He has stated that he too wishes to withdraw from performing on January 1. He wrote that this would be disrespectful towards his gurus.
Vishakha Hari also took to social media to talk about this issue. She wrote, “This year’s Sangeetha Kalanidhi designate awardee has engaged in a lot of slandering previously, hurting the sentiments of many tremendously and willfully (sic).”
While there have been so many people against TM Krishna winning the award, Chinmayi Sripada has supported his win. She didn’t talk of the controversy, but she congratulated him on winning the award. At the same time, she raised a few questions to Ranjani-Gayatri.
Neither TM Krishna nor the Music Academy has given a statement on these accusations. Let’s wait and watch what they have to say about the same.
